


Det merkelige paret

by rosefox



Category: Risen som ikke hadde noe hjerte på seg | The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body - Asbjørnsen & Moe
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Complicated Relationships, Gen, Misses Clause Challenge, Pre-Canon, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-09-05 13:20:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16811440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosefox/pseuds/rosefox
Summary: Between being kidnapped and being rescued, there's a long time of the princess having to live with the giant. It's awkward.





	Det merkelige paret

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosencrantz](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosencrantz/gifts).



> See endnotes for content notes.
> 
> I hope these awkward roommate stories are something like what you had in mind. Happy Yuletide!

The giant never does the washing up. “I was waiting for you to do it,” he tells the princess.

“I’m a princess,” the princess says. “I’ve never washed dishes in my life. I don’t even know how.”

“Well, I don’t know how either,” the giant says. He doesn’t use dishes. All he eats is pinnekjøtt, all year round, and he eats it straight out of the pot (which would be big enough for the princess to use as a dish tub if she washed dishes). He throws the bones over his shoulder and pours the broth out the window. Then he scours the pot with salt and calls it done.

“If you wanted a scullery maid, you should have kidnapped one,” the princess snaps.

“You only have dishes at all because I put so much thought and care into making my house comfortable for you,” the giant snaps back. In fact, uncertain how many dishes a princess might need, the giant waylaid an entire shipment of fine china before kidnapping her. 

When the stack of dirty dishes begins to teeter, he puts them back in the crate, unwashed, and fetches the next crate from the barn. “Don’t be ungrateful,” he tells her. “I’m doing my best. I don’t even have a heart in my body. It’s not fair to expect more from me.”

It’s true, she thinks. He really is trying. He made sure she has human-size dishes and a human-size bed. He keeps her fed and reads stories to her in the evening by the fire. Three of her sisters were kidnapped once—it’s an occupational hazard for princesses—and spent years buried in sand up to their necks. She could have it a lot worse.

.

“Why do you do that with the bones?” the princess asks, daintily picking at her pinnekjøtt.

“What, throw them to the dogs? It’s traditional among giants.”

She looks at him, puzzled. “You don’t have dogs. I’ve never seen a dog here.”

“I've never had dogs, actually,” the giant says. “But maintaining traditions is important.”

The pile of sheep bones in the corner is taller than the princess. Parts of it are green. It smells very bad. 

The princess yells at the giant until he agrees to haul the old bones out to the tip. Then she storms off up into the loft to stew over his ridiculousness. When she comes back down, she discovers the giant has wrapped the bones up in the big quilt from her bed and slung it over his shoulder like a beggar’s sack. “I didn’t think you’d mind,” the giant says.

.

The dish situation is dire. The princess asks the giant whether they can hire a woman from the village to come in and do the washing up.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” the giant says. “No one from the village wants anything to do with me. And I’m not letting you go down there on your own. You’d run away.”

“I wouldn’t,” the princess says, but they both know it’s not true.

“Is that what this is all about, with the dishes?” the giant says. He sounds hurt. “A way to get me to let you leave?”

“Of course not!” the princess says. This time she means it. She looks for ways to escape now and then, but it never really occurred to her to try to trick the giant. It doesn’t seem fair, somehow. He rescued her by brute force—

Why did she think _rescued_? He kidnapped her from her home and family. Who were awful, admittedly. And their cook’s pinnekjøtt wasn’t nearly as good as the giant’s is, and they only had it once a year, on Christmas. And here she has a big feather bed all to herself, with no sisters to share it with. 

But she definitely doesn’t enjoy being here, she reminds herself. And that big bed is less appealing with the quilt all stained and smelly.

“You should launder my quilt,” she tells the giant. “Or get me a new one.”

“What’s ‘launder’?” the giant asks.

“It’s some magic the servants do to make dirty clothes clean again,” the princess says.

“Oh, magic, I can do that,” the giant says. He looks at the quilt a certain way and it turns to stone.

There’s more yelling. The giant hauls the stone quilt outside, shouting “You _said_ to do _magic_ and _that’s_ what I _did_ ” over his shoulder, and smashes it to pebbles in the dooryard.

The princess shivers all that night, huddled under her heavy wool coat. The next evening the giant gives her a big blanket of sheepskins sewn together with clumsy stitches. She’s pretty sure the giant made it himself. It takes some getting used to, but it’s very warm, and the lanolin keeps her hands soft as the dry days of winter descend on the giant’s house.

.

The giant spins wool from his sheep into what he calls thread, which to the princess is heavy yarn. His spinning wheel is old and enormous and it rattles so noisily it shakes the house. She tells him to take it out to the barn. He tells her it will bother the sheep. She tells him that at least the sheep can go outside. “Fine!” he shouts. He stomps over to the door and heaves up the bar that keeps it shut. “Go outside then!”

For the first time in months, the princess steps outdoors. The world is very bright and very big and very cold. For some reason she thought the house was in a wood—she didn’t get a good look at it when the giant brought her here—but it’s actually in a steep-sided valley. Snow is thick on the ground, softening the rocky hills. A path flattened by the giant’s enormous feet wends behind the house and, she supposes, to the barn. There’s no sense at all of where the nearest village is, or how to get there.

It’s very quiet. Faintly, she can hear the spinning wheel clacking away.

She goes back in. The rattling isn’t so bad, really. The giant works his way through the basket of roving, and she finds she misses the sound a bit when he’s done. The next day she asks him to whittle her a pair of knitting needles.

.

Christmas comes and they have pinnekjøtt for dinner. It’s a bit anticlimactic, even with a shot of aquavit to mark the occasion.

The princess suddenly remembers that when she was a small child, just grown enough for her first proper Christmas dinner, she was awestruck by the pinnekjøtt and prayed to God for there to be pinnekjøtt all year round. Is this how her prayer was answered? Is this where God wants her to be?

The princess gives the giant a pair of knitted socks. He gives her a stack of simple birch bark plates and cups that she can burn after she uses them. 

A few days later, the giant dumps all her moldy, slimy fine china in the tip and pulls the crates apart for firewood. It feels final, somehow, as though all her years in her parents' castle were nothing more than a short trip abroad, and now she’s home and the servants have unpacked the last of her luggage.

She sits by the fire in the evening, and as the giant reads her a story, she begins knitting him another pair of socks.

.

The seasons turn. The snow melts, grudgingly. The ewes’ bellies get big, and the giant spends all day and night out in the field to help with the lambing. The princess waits up for him, worrying for the little lambs. It never crosses her mind to try to escape while he’s distracted.

Some people blunder through the valley on their way to somewhere else, and the giant turns them to stone. The lambs and ewes play hide and seek around the statues. The princess stands in the doorway, watching them. She’d forgotten that other people existed. It’s strange to be reminded. It makes her feel... something. She realizes that she hasn’t had feelings in a long while—not even anger at the giant when he’s careless or cruel. She used to be angry with him all the time.

The faces of the stone people are frozen in a variety of expressions. She examines them, trying to remember the names of feelings. Surprise. Fear. Confusion. Joy.

She wonders what it is she’s feeling. Maybe if she thinks about it some more, it will come to her.

”Dinner’s ready, darling,” the giant calls. She closes the door, gets one of her birch bark plates, and serves herself from the pot. They’re having pinnekjøtt again. It’s very good.

**Author's Note:**

> Content note: The giant kidnaps the princess and keeps her prisoner, so nothing about their relationship is consensual, even when he's being kind and she's trying to make the best of it. Some of the interactions in the story may be familiar to survivors of abusive or controlling relationships. The story does not contain sexual violence or the threat of it.
> 
> The title means _The odd couple_ in Norwegian.
> 
> This story was inspired by [this lengthy Twitter thread of horrible, horrifying roommate stories](https://twitter.com/Nicole_Cliffe/status/1068644206346874880).
> 
> Thanks to ArisTGD for the beta!


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